For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus.

Or thou might'st better listen to the wind, Whose language is to thee a barren noise, Though it blows legend-laden through the trees.

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination.

I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.